Cult
The Kyffhäuser caves in Thuringia contain headless skeletons and split human and animal bones that have been interpreted as sacrifices. Other deposits include grain, knotted vegetable fibres and hair and bronze objects (axes, pendants and pins). The Ith-caves (Lower Saxony) have yielded comparative material.
In the Knovíz-culture, human bones with cut-marks and traces of burning have been found in settlement pits. They have been interpreted as evidence for cannibalism. As these bones form a large part of the burials known this may have been a quite regular treatment including the ritual manipulation and dismemberment of human corpses. Moon-shaped clay fire dogs are thought to have a religious significance, as well as crescent shaped razors.
An obsession with waterbirds is indicated by numerous pictures and three-dimensional representations. Combined with the hoards deposited in rivers and swamps, it indicates religious beliefs connected with water. This has led some scholars to believe in serious droughts during the late Bronze Age. Sometimes the water-birds are combined with circles, the so-called sun-barque-motif.
Read more about this topic: Urnfield Culture
Famous quotes containing the word cult:
“The cult of individuality and personality, which promotes painters and poets only to promote itself, is really a business. The greater the “genius” of the personage, the greater the profit.”
—George Grosz (1893–1959)
“By Modernism I mean the positive rejection of the past and the blind belief in the process of change, in novelty for its own sake, in the idea that progress through time equates with cultural progress; in the cult of individuality, originality and self-expression.”
—Dan Cruickshank (b. 1949)
“The cult of art gives pride; one never has too much of it.”
—Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)